Thursday, February 19, 2015

A Thought on the Parasha

Feel free to download and print
the Parasha sheet and share it with your friends and family: Click here: Parashat Terumah

Can God Dwell on Earth?

Why did God command the People of
Israel to build a Mishkan? The answer seems obvious: "They shall
build Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in their midst" (Shemot, 25:8). The
Mishkan, from the root sh'k'n, to dwell, was to be a place where
mere mortals could feel God's actual presence, a place in which God could dwell
in the physical realm.

Logically, this should not be possible. How can an infinite and
transcendent God inhabit a physical space? The very reality of the Mishkan,
the very purpose it purports to serve, is a religious absurdity and, thus, also
a religious wonder. It is this absurdity and this wonder to which King Solomon
gives such powerful voice in his dedication of the First Temple:

The Lord has said that
He would dwell in a dark cloud; I have indeed built a magnificent temple
for you, a place for you to dwell forever... But will God really dwell on
earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much
less this temple I have built? (Melachim I, 8:12-13,27)

There is no way for God to dwell on the earth or for us to feel
God's actual presence, yet God allows it to happen for our sake. We are
physical beings, and we cannot connect to something that is not part of our
physical world. This is the attraction of idolatry: it allows for a physical,
concrete image to represent God and thus provides a means of tactile
connection.

The Torah recognizes this human need but forbids any physical
representation of God as a corruption of God. The solution is to create a Mishkan,
a physical abode, a structure in which we can worship and offer sacrifices and
a place toward which we can direct our prayers. But this does not address the
theological problem, for the significance of this place is that it is God's
abode. For God to dwell there, God must have some actual physical presence on
Earth.

This theological paradox is not solved in Melachim; King Solomon
states the impossibility and moves on. It is therefore not surprising that the
Rabbis of the Talmud addressed the issue as well. Their first step in grappling
with this problem was to introduce the idea of Shekhina, a word and
concept not found in Tanakh. Like Mishkan, the word Shekhina derives
from the verb to dwell, sh'k'n. Shekhina is not God but God's presence.
God cannot be present on earth but the Shekhina can. The concept of Shekhina is
a paradox: it is God's presence without God being present.

But for some the problem still remained, for how could even a
manifestation of God be a part of our world? Perhaps it could not. Thus, in the
Talmud we read:

Rabbi Yossi stated, Neither did
the Shekhina ever descend to earth, nor did Moshe or Eliyahu ever ascend to
Heaven as it is written, 'The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the
earth hath He given to the sons of men.'

But did not the Shekhina descend
to earth? Is it not in fact written, And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai? -
That was above ten handbreadths (Sukkah 5a).

For Rabbi Yossi, even the Shekhina never truly dwelt in the Mishkan.
It always remained above the earth, hovering on top of the Ark but never
entering into the human sphere. This should be understood not just physically
and geographically but theologically as well. The gulf between the human and
the divine is ultimately unbridgeable. No matter how great the human being, she
will never escape her corporeal bounded-ness and rise above her physical
reality. And although God descended upon Mount Sinai and God's presence dwelled
in the Mishkan, God, infinite and divine, can never truly be present in
our physical reality.

Not everyone agreed with Rabbi Yossi. The anonymous voice of the
Talmud and other passages reflect the belief that Moshe did in fact ascend to
heaven and that God did in fact descend to earth. In this view, points of
contact are indeed possible. In other words, in the Creation of Adam,
should Michelangelo have painted God's and Adam's fingers touching rather than
leaving an unbridgeable gap between the two?

This debate has continued for centuries. In many ways it is a
debate between rationalists and mystics or the mystically inclined. For the
Kabbalists, contact was possible. One could enter into an ecstatic state and
rise up into the supernal realms. More significantly, God was present in this
world. Not only could one encounter God in the physical world, but the very
performance of the mitzvot, done with the right intentions, could bring
about the unification of the sephirot and shape God's nature.
Rationalists like Maimonides would have none of this. For Maimonides, the
Torah's use of human language and qualities may have been necessary to describe
God, but this was already a major concession in relating to the divine. The
idea that God could be anything but wholly transcendent was anathema to him.

Think about the question of God in nature. For a Kabbalist like
Ramban, the laws of nature do not exist. God "renews every day the acts of
creation" (commentary on Shemot,13:16). In contrast, Rambam states that
the entire natural order - including miracles - was preprogrammed, and he
devotes a large section of the Guide to rejecting the position that
nature is constantly renewed (Guide for the Perplexed, II, 29). Ramban
sees God in nature by seeing God's constant activity; Rambam does not see God
in nature but is in awe of God's wisdom and of how God set everything in motion
(Laws of Foundations of the Torah, 4:12). For Rambam, God remains
ultimately transcendent.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that Ramban and Rambam disagree as
to the purpose of the Mishkan. Ramban understands the verses literally:
the Mishkan is the place for God's presence to dwell. At its center is
the Ark, upon which the Shekhina rests and where Moshe encounters God and hears
God's word (commentary on Shemot, 25:1). Rambam frames things differently:
"It is a positive commandment to construct a House for
God, prepared for sacrifices to be offered within, and to celebrate there
three times a year, as it states: 'And you shall make Me a sanctuary'" (Laws
of the Chosen House, 1:1). Notice that he talks only about the practical
functions of the Temple: it is a place for sacrifices and a place to which the
people can make festivals of pilgrimage. There is no sense that this House is
in any way an actual dwelling place for the Divine presence. Notice, too, how
Rambam significantly truncates the verse from our parasha, quoting the
first part, "You shall make Me a sanctuary," but dropping the last,
"that I may dwell therein"!

This also explains the debate between Rambam and Ramban regarding
prayer. For Rambam, there is a Biblical mitzvah to pray daily, while for
Ramban, prayer is a religious experience but not a commanded obligation
(Rambam, Positive Mitzvot, 5). If God is wholly transcendent, as Rambam
understood, then an obligation to pray - a duty to recognize God and our
dependency on God on a daily basis - makes sense. But as a religious experience
this makes less sense: What type of connection could be achieved with a fully
transcendent God? On the other hand, if God truly dwells in this world as
Ramban understood, then the religious person attuned to God's presence would be
inwardly compelled to reach out and forge a connection. This is a
self-propelled, intrinsically valuable religious experience which need not be
commanded and which is lessened when it is the result of an external
obligation. The religious person prays to God because she has the opportunity
to do so, not because she has the duty to do so.

We must acknowledge that both types of people exist within a
community. There are those who are more religious, more spiritual, who feel and
connect to a sense of God's presence in this world. And there are those who are
less religiously inclined but who can relate to a transcendent God through a
sense of commanded-ness and duty. But then there are also those for whom God is
not a felt, experiential reality and for whom a life of mitzvot is a
lifestyle but not a religious duty. This is certainly less than ideal. Each of
us needs to find a way to create a personal Mishkan that is true to who
we are, a Mishkan that allows, one way or another, for God to dwell in
our midst.